Poster Printing Service

Also refer to our cost section regarding rush charges which will go into effect January 1, 2018.

Poster orders must be submitted electronically via email posters@abraxas.wustl.edu),Large File Transfer,WUSTL Box or another method such as Google Drive. Please share your files via a shareable link with the "People with the link option" when using WUSTL Box rather than adding a user as a collaborator. We do not accept in-person order submissions.

The Charles F. and Joanne Knight ADRC makes extremely high-quality poster printing on paper and foldable fabric available for a low cost to all Washington University faculty, staff and students. Use the links on the left to learn more about our poster guidelines, costs and media types. If you have questions, feel free to email: posters@abraxas.wustl.edu.

The PDF linked below is an editble form that can be saved, printed or even emailed to the Knight ADRC. You DO NOT need Acrobat Professional to edit or save this form; however, you must fill it in from within Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) or Acrobat Professional. The form fields will not function properly if you open the form up in the default MacOS Preview program. You must at minimum use Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Download the form HERE by right-clicking and selecting Save Link As or Save Target As.

When filling out the form, your departmental code (ie. 3255, 3855, etc.) is required unless paying by check or cash. Fund number is not required; however, it will make the process of billing your department easier. Cash (exact amount only) is also acceptable. We no longer accept personal checks.

Semi-Gloss (Satin) Photo Paper

The Knight ADRC buys Premium Semi-Gloss (Satin) Instant-Dry paper in 36" and 42" rolls. Each roll provides 100' of high-quality, printable surface. This paper can be printed with full bleeds (edge-to-edge color) with no white margin if the poster has a solid edge-to-edge background color. Instant-dry means that your poster is ready to be handled as soon as it is done printing. Posters that have heavy coverage (especially black) will require 10 minutes of additional dry time beyond the printing time.

Specifications:

Borderless Possible: Yes

Media Weight: 170 g/m2

Media Brightness: 107 (Semi-Gloss)

Average Print Time: 30 minutes
Average Dry Time: None

Heavy Coverage Dry Time: 10 minutes

Foldable Fabric

The Knight ADRC is extremely excited to offer this new cutting-edge material to print scientific posters on. This new offering provides the same exceptional quality poster you are used to while allowing for much easier transport of your poster. How? No more tubes! The water-resistant, wrinkle-resistant, tear-resistant polyester fabric is foldable! This is perfect for poster presenters who have to travel by plane. Gone are the days of needing to haul a poster tube around and be forced to pay for it to be checked, have it lost, crushed or otherwise destroyed.

This material prints just like our paper offering. Fine details are not lost on the fabric. The fabric is also water-RESISTANT as well as wrinkle and tear-RESISTANT. So, you can rest assured that you can fold up your poster and place it in your luggage and it will arrive in one piece (unless the airline destroys your luggage!)

Care Tips:

Avoid placing folded poster next to sharp objects

Avoid placing folded poster next to objects that may leak onto poster

You may want to re-roll your poster once you arrive at your destination. It will help remove wrinkles caused by your trip.

Removing Wrinkles & Creases:

Set an iron to the lowest possible setting at first (silk setting).

Only iron on the side that doesn't have the printed image. If you can see ink, you're doing it wrong.

Do NOT use steam.

Press firmly with the iron but be careful to not dig any sharp corners of the iron into the fabric causing it to tear.

Do NOT leave the iron in any one spot for more than a half-second. Again, this is like a silk shirt. You can burn and ruin the poster.

Do move the iron around rapidly and with some pressure. Ironing out the wrinkles/creases may take several minutes.

Specifications:

Borderless Possible: No. A small white margin "frames" the poster.

Media Weight: 135 g/m2

Average Print Time: 30 minutes
Average Dry Time: 10 minutes

Heavy Coverage Dry Time: 15 minutes

The Knight ADRC charges per linear foot for poster printing as of 3/17/2017. The Knight ADRC prefers that we are able to bill you online via the University's online billing system. This means we'll need a department number (required) and a fund number if possible (see order form). We can accept exact cash and checks.

Costs are calculated on a per liner foot basis. This the length of the amount of paper that printer uses when printing your poster. It does not necessarily mean the longest side of your poster, but it often is. In some cases, if one your dimensions is the width of the media (36" or 42"), and your other dimension is smaller, we can rotate your poster so your cost is based on the shorter dimension. Examples of costs are proivded below.

The formula to calculate your poster cost:

Length of paper used in inches / 12 [a constant to convert length into feet] *
Cost of media

Effective January 1st, 2018, the Knight ADRC will institute a $20 rush surcharge under the following conditions:

Unscheduled posters submitted and expected the same business day

Unscheduled posters submitted after 3:30pm the previous business day to when they are due. For example, submitting an unscheduled poster at 4pm Tuesday and expecting it Wednesday.

Unscheduled posters submitted over the weekend or on WUSM campus observed holidays and expected the next business day.

To avoid paying rush charges or, even worse, the inability to have your poster printed, contact posters@abraxas.wustl.edu to schedule your poster for printing. Poster printing takes places on Monday-Friday on non-WUSM observed holidays between the hours of 8:00am and 4:00pm. 2 slots (1 paper, 1 fabric) per every 30 minutes are available for scheduling from 8:00am - 3:30pm excluding lunch (12:00pm-1:00pm). Therefore, there are a maximum of 13 fabric and 13 paper slots available for any normal business day. If you schedule a poster and do not submit it by your slotted time, your printing slot will be released. If your submission is late, you will be charged a rush fee or printing of your poster may be impossible. Submit your completed order form and poster on time to avoid any disruption or penalty charge.

You can also avoid rush charges by submitting your poster by 3:30pm the prior non-holiday, business day.

All posters submitted within the available slotted times will be printed by 4pm that day unless an extreme emeregency takes place. We will make every effort to contact you in the unlikely event that happens so you can reschedule or find an alternative printer. It's always wise to have your poster printed a day or two before it's due to be safe. If you need to pick up your poster at a certain time before 4pm, please let us know so we can make sure that is possible.

Templates

The Knight ADRC provides two basic templates below for PowerPoint. You are not required to use either of these templates. If you choose to use your own, please skip to the next section. It is your responsiblity to make sure that the poster you create meets the dimensions alotted by the meeting/conference you are attending. If you know your required dimensions and have questions, you can contact us with questions on how to best achieve your printed goal at posters@abraxas.wustl.edu.

Important Design Guidelines

If you don't use one of our provided templates, your page size should be exactly half of the final print size if you are using Microsoft PowerPoint unless PowerPoint (or the program you're are using) will support your final print size. If the program you are using supports your designed print size, then you should create it at that size. If your poster needs to be designed at half size, the printer will correctly scale your file 200% without skewing the size of any element.

For example, PowerPoint will not support a slide size of 42" x 70". If you need a poster this size, you need to set your slide size to 21" x 35" (half size). If the final poster size desired is 42" x 46", PowerPoint will support a slide this size. You do not need to design your poster at half size.

If you design a poster that isn't exactly half size or full size, we can seamlessly and proportionally scale whatever size your poster is to fit either the 36" or 42" roll media. There is a spot on the order form for you to note if you want your file printed as-is (the page size of the document) or scaled proportionally to fit our media.

If your poster does not completely fit either the 36" or 42" roll media, you will have a margin that you need to trim. The Knight ADRC does not have the capability to trim posters.

Always leave a .5" margin around your poster. Do not place text, logos, images or graphs/charts inside this margin in order to avoid problems. A red line border is included on our templates we provide in order to give you a visual reference. If you keep your text and images within this line, generally there are no issues. This red line will be removed before printing.

Borderless Prints: A "borderless" print is simply when you have a background color for the entire slide that goes to the very edge of each side of the slide. Your poster must be scaled to fill either the 36" or 42" media for it to be printed borderless. Fabric posters cannot be printed as borderless. A tiny, uniform margin will appear around your poster. When the poster printer prints something borderless, it slightly increases the scale of the poster beyond 100% to make sure color prints to the very edge of the media. Because of this increase in scale, any text or objects inside the .5" margin run the risk of being clipped and or pushed off the edge of your printed poster entirely. In the example below, the orange dotted line represents the .5" margin that text, images and so forth must be within this line to avoid issues when printing a borderless poster. Any poster that is submitted as a borderless poster but does not meet the margin requirements will not be printed borderless. You will end up with a slight white margin around your poster. Check your margins if you expect a borderless print or ask us to look at your file; otherwise, it will be printed with a white margin.

Use typical fonts: Arial for PC and Arial or Helvetica if you are working on a Mac. Times New Roman is strongly discouraged. It makes the poster difficult to read.

Don't copy and paste images, graphs, etc. into the poster file if you can possibly avoid this. Screenshots (Print Screens) and web logos will also look horrible when blown up 200%. Export them from their program of origin, and then insert them as images (in order of quality: TIFF, BMP, JPG, GIF) at 200-300ppi resolution.

It's best if your image resolution is between 200ppi and 300ppi since your poster will double in size. A quick way to get an idea of how your image will look is to zoom in on it at 200% if your poster is half-size. If it looks blocky and unreadable, increase the resolution of your image. If you plan on submitting a file that is 100% of the final desired printed size, view your poster at 100% zoom to get an idea of how your poster will look printed.

Review your work for errors! You will be charged for reprints. No exceptions. Once you submit your poster for printing, you should consider it printed. If you do find an error, contact us immediately. If your poster has already started printing, you will be charged for that entire print plus the new poster.

Posters that deviate from our template may result in extra blank space around your poster since we print on a 36" or 42" roll. Any extra margin is your responsibility to trim either by scissor or meter stick and blade if you do not want us to scale your poster to fit our media stock.

To send us a file larger than 100MB, use the WUSTL Large File Transfer service. Enter posters@abraxas.wustl.edu in the TO field.

NCSU also has some great tips when it comes to scientific posters. Check them out!

Templates

The Knight ADRC provides two basic templates below for PowerPoint. You are not required to use either of these templates. If you choose to use your own, please review the Important Design Guidelines section at the Guidelines link on the left. It is your responsiblity to make sure that the poster you create meets the dimensions alotted by the meeting/conference you are attending. If you know your required dimensions and have questions, you can contact us with questions on how to best achieve your printed goal at posters@abraxas.wustl.edu.

If your poster has one dimenion smaller than 36" or 42" and would like to know how your poster will scale based upon our order form options of scaling to fit our 36" or 42" media, you can use our "proportion wheel" below.

Fill in your file's dimensions (width and height) and either the reproduction width or reproduction height and click Calculate to receive the final reproduction dimension and the reproduction percentage. Typically, you will enter either 36" or 42" in the reproduction size section for the same box that has the smallest number from your original size section. You must click the Reset button if you plan on changing any dimension in order to recalculate your new size.